Usually, the word “courage” is associated with a striking action, dictated by an urgent need, an action that challenges death and takes it over, showing a luminous human presence. It is the “numinous” courage, visible, shown, that happens in extreme conditions, and that then becomes an epic, a story, an example.
But there is another type of courage, silent and unobtrusive, and it is this declination of the word Courage that this show wants to speak of. Silent courage acts in the human being almost unexpectedly, it does not presuppose a warrior’s mettle, it does not stand out on the scene to show itself in the light, it does not expect reward, not even the posthumous one of the exhilarating story. This courage acts in a submissive way, it also acts out of an unavoidable urgency, but it does not demand recognition, it does not wait for thanks, he or she who implements it does so out of necessity, a necessity that has to do with the depth of the human that is in us, to which it is even difficult to give an explanation.
Words like compassion, solidarity, altruism, love, charity, goodness, try to circumscribe the human mystery of that act but more than anything they only delimit its empathic value, because there are no words that explain how that impulse to act, despite everything, occurs in individuals who suddenly “feel” they have to perform a gesture that is suddenly “necessary” for them.
Antigone, who, despite the prohibition of Creon’s law, goes to bury her brother’s body, paying with her death for this transgression, is the archetypal example of this form of courage. “There are unwritten, inviolable laws that have always existed, and no one knows where they drew their splendor.” It is this splendor that Antigone speaks of that I am looking for in this show, that luminous core that transforms an entire existence into an exemplary act, but silent, luminous but lived in the shadow, in modesty, in the pure necessity of having to act. I will search for five narratives, five extreme situations, where five existences can be illuminated, which, thanks to the story, become, in that ephemeral and powerful place that is the theatrical stage, five testimonies of taciturn courage.
A simple dramaturgical structure, words and music that intertwine to restore the scandalous simplicity of those human acts of silent courage.
